“God hates (fill in city name)” was a meme Bill Simmons worked into the ground during his writing days. He could hardly go a month without revisiting the topic, tweaking it slightly, looking at it from another perspective.

Sure, it usually came out with Cleveland and Buffalo near the top, as “most benighted sports cities” … but cases could be made for Minneapolis, San Diego …

And Toronto?

I don’t remember seeing much about “Toronto and Godforsaken”, but Canada’s biggest city warrants some sympathy, as I realized after looking at the baseball Blue Jays this week as they swung a couple of big deals in a bid to improve their chances of making the baseball playoffs …

… for the first time since 1993, the longest no-playoffs streak in North America’s Big Four sports leagues.

Toronto sports fans appear to be most agitated about not winning the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup since 1967 — 48 years ago.

The Maple Leafs have been making an art of screwing up things for the past four-plus decades, which has to be hard to accept for a public that cares so much about its Original Six team.

The NBA’s Toronto Raptors are short of accomplishments, too. They joined the league for the in 1995-96 season and in the subsequent 20 years have made the playoffs only seven times. They have survived the first round only once.

Then we come to the Blue Jays.

Winners of consecutive World Series, in 1992 and 1993, with guys like Joe Carter and Paul Molitor and John Olerud. Two championships? That’s a big deal.

But they have done pretty much nothing since. Their 21-season no-playoffs streak is impressive, in a negative sense. Much of it may be due to playing in the American League East in an era when it was routinely the best division in baseball. Lots of last or second-to-last finishes behind the Yankees-Red Sox-Orioles-Rays in the AL East.

Yes, Toronto has done well in the Canadian Football League, winning four championships since 1996, but how much does mastery of a nine-team, second-tier league ameliorate the struggles of the Leafs, Jays and Raptors?

Anyway, there you are. Not many crushing defeats and close calls for Toronto’s big three teams, but maybe “quietly incompetent” is even more depressing.